I was working on a mini grammar of English and I came across a spurious parse for “the dog is old” - with an extra (int ) phrase. I wonder if this is interference between the yes-no library and the copula functionality? I was able to remove the parse by adding INV - to the cop-lex super type. However, I have little idea how the question mechanisms work so I figured I would ask

Is this going to cause problems if someone wanted to add support for “is the dog old”

I haven’t checked but most likely yes, it will. In the past, I had to disassociate types which are intended for questions from types which are intended for e.g. subordinating complementizers. I expect that something like this might need to be done for copulas as well.

Or, it is possible that the interrogative clause type is underconstrained there somehow. Could I see the grammar?

Yes, this seems like the right way to do it. If you want to fix this bug in customization (and thanks, if so!), it seems like the spot is yes_no_questions.py, where INV is introduced. It’s added to “all verbs”, but the way that’s set up is missing the copula (and possibly other auxiliaries?). So you probably want to add it to cop-lex just in case it’s being added elsewhere.

The way the subj-v-inv rule works involves an [ INV - ] daughter and an [ INV + ] mother, so (as long as the rule can apply to cop-lex, also probably a bug), there shouldn’t be a problem there.

@olzama I emailed you the choices file that extends mini English that illustrates the problem. Sorry for the delay; I was having issues with the verbal inflection, but I just figured it out (is there a way to upload choices files here that I can’t figure out?)

Here’s the test suite I was using to make it:

I sleep
I can sleep
the dog sleeps
the dog can sleep
the dog is old
can I sleep
can the dog sleep
is the dog old

the dog is old is the only one with the spurious reading. The rest are consistent with the ERG.